Sensitive Areas

Fourteen long-term guests at the Guantánamo Bay anomaly are at last being subjected to military hearings, which will establish whether it is expedient for them to be designated "enemy combatants", worthy of the privilege of being found guilty by a military tribunal, rather than suspected enemy combatants, the designation for which they have been imprisoned all this time. Journalists have been barred from the hearings because of what the Pentagon considers the politically sensitive nature of the evidence. Human rights activists claim that the real reason is the risk of renewed slander and aggressive evidentialising on the part of the detainees about secret prisons, assertive interrogation techniques short of organ failure and suchlike; or, in other words, the politically sensitive nature of the evidence. The non-sensitive parts of the transcripts will be released in a couple of weeks, once the Pentagon has edited out the parts which might cause offence.